Budget Disaster? Blame Reagan
"The tax package
hammered out last weekend continues a Washington policy established in the
Reagan era: It takes a heavy bite out of the paychecks of working-class
Americans."
- Beginning of front page story by Boston Globe
reporter Charles Stein, October 2.
"Conservatives
describe this as the second phase of the Reagan Revolution; Democrats see it
as the sorry result. Both are right. Reagan's 1981 budget-and-tax-cutting
frenzy found Democrats and Republicans slashing social spending for the poor,
passing more responsibility to their state and local brethren."
- Assistant Managing Editor Gloria Borger and Senior Editor Kenneth T. Walsh,
October 8 U.S. News & World Report.
"But Congress is
not solely - or even primarily to blame. For a decade the Reagan and Bush
Administrations have been submitting fraudulent, free-lunch budgets that
promised huge tax cuts, a social 'safety net,' a 'kinder, gentler' nation,
improved education, a war on drugs, the greatest military buildup in peacetime
history, and - most fraudulent of all - a balanced budget...Bush's
nationally televised paean to the homely virtues of a balanced checkbook might
have carried a lot more weight in both the country and in Congress had he not
won office two years ago with a promise to reduce the deficit without raising
taxes. It was precisely such claims - that there is a free lunch after all -
that got the U.S. into its fiscal mess."
- Time Washington Bureau Chief Stanley Cloud, October 15 issue.
"For ten years
Ronald Reagan taught us there was a free lunch. Folks, he said, we're going to
cut your taxes and we're going to spend like there's no tomorrow and you don't
have to pay for it. Folks, we're now paying for it and it's bitter
medicine....we're going to have to raise taxes to get some sort of fairness
here....For ten years the great wizard sold us that idea, that we could grow
our way out of the deficits and we bought i, and we didn't."
- Sam Donaldson on This Week with David Brinkley, October 7.
Up or Down?
"Spending and
income rose slightly in Aug."
- Philadelphia Inquirer, September 27.
"Spending, Income,
Orders Fall"
- Washington Post, same day.
Irresponsible Newt
"By some theories
the conservative Republicans led by Newt Gingrich would be winners because
they are trying to force the Democrats to take the burden of passing those
higher taxes and spending cuts. But I think that really, although there have
been some more responsible members in this debate, there really are no
winners."
- NBC's Andrea Mitchell, October 8 Nightly News.
Embellishing on the Public Pulse
"Many of those
interviewed described the budget dilemma as partisan war, with the Democratic
Congress trying valiantly to protect the interests of the little people
against a pull-out-all-the-stops assault on spending by Daddy-Warbucks
Republicans."
- Washington Post staff writer Guy Gugliotta in October 6 news story
on public reaction as gauged by Post reporters.
Highway Robbery
"The most effective
solution, many experts say, would be a combination of market incentives and
somewhat higher fuel-efficiency standards. A stiff gasoline tax of $1 per gal.
would encourage consumers to choose more economical autos."
- S.C. Gwynne, Time Detroit correspondent, October 8.
West's Problems Go East
"East Germany is
staggering toward unification, and may get there close to dead on arrival, the
victim of an overdose of capitalism."
- ABC reporter Jerry King, October 1 World News Tonight.
"For many East
German women, living in a country where abortion on demand has been legal
since 1972, the debate over abortion in worrisome. Many fear it is the first
step in stripping away their rights in everything from pregnancy to child care
to jobs to sharing household chores."
- Boston Globe reporter Jonathan Kauffman, September 30.
Well, He Used To Be An Idiot, But...
"This week Helmut
Kohl will become Chancellor of Germany. Not East Germany, not West Germany,
just Germany. The first person to hold that job since Adolf Hitler. As Steve
Kroft reports, until last year, most Germans considered this conservative
Catholic, this staunch defender of the United States, a bumbling, indecisive
mediocrity who was in serious political trouble. But that was befre the wall
came down, before Helmut Kohl engineered in ten months a reunification of
Germany that many thought would take ten years."
- Meredith Vieira introducing 60 Minutes story on Kohl, September
30.
Ronald Reagan?
"A sort of country
yokel, provincial, not smart, not intellectual, slow on the uptake, beholden
to interest groups, Gulliver tied into knots by the Lilliputians."
- Editor in Chief of Rheinischer Merkur on the German media's
impression of Kohl, 60 Minutes, September 30.
Always Looking At the Down Side
"Povery Remains
High Despite U.S. Expansion: Recession Could Push Millions Below Line"
- September 27 Washington Post story on poverty level falling from
13 to 12.8%
"U.S. Reports
Poverty Is Down but Inequality Is Up"
- New York Times, same day.
Tough Question
"Let me ask you to
be an analyst for us. You've been working on behalf of children now for years
and years. What happened in our country where we can watch children going
hungry, pregnant women not getting the proper care. And we don't seem to care
as a society. How did we get here?"
- CBS reporter Lesley Stahl interviewing Marian Wright Edelman of the
Children's Defense Fund, September 30 Face the Nation.
General Kuralt Decides Right & Wrong
"Air Force General
Curtis LeMay died today. He was the great advocate of strategic bombing who
once was quoted as threatening to bomb Vietnam back to the Stone Age. But if
the generals since LeMay have learned anything, it is that you cannot defeat a
determined enemy from the air no matter how many bombs you drop. Hanoi took a
terrible pounding and Hanoi won the war....He was a great old general who died
today, but he was wrong."
- Charles Kuralt on new CBS News show America Tonight, October 1.
You've Lost That Objective Communist Party Reporting
"Here in Serbia, as
in some of the country's other five republics, people say local newspapers and
television stations have abandoned objectivity for an openly partisan, and
nationalist, version of current events."
- New York Times reporter Celestine Bohlen on Yugoslavia, September
13.
- L. Brent
Bozell III; Publisher
- Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- Callista Gould, Jim Heiser, Marian Kelley, Gerard Scimeca; Media Analysts
- Jennifer Hardebeck; Administrative Assistant